This dissertation surveys the development of the Hawaiian higher educational system in the 19th century Hawaiian Kingdom as a strategy of Hawaiian leadership in promoting and protecting Hawaiian independence. This analysis revisits a Hawaiian educational history canon that overwhelmingly credits missionaries and foreigners as imposing an…

In the 3 years prior to Harry Truman's establishment of the President's Commission on Higher Education in 1946, the Association of American Colleges (AAC), the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and Harvard University all released reports on the relationship of general or liberal education to the political order. This historiographical…

A deeper understanding of how slavery and colonialism fundamentally shaped the system of higher education in the United States has led colleges and universities to reexamine their histories and acknowledge harms committed and the need for repair. Campuses are experimenting with how to address racial justice and healing for faculty, staff, and…

American colleges and universities are failing at civic education. Too many graduates are ignorant of basic facts about American history and institutions. According to its most recent report on what colleges and universities teach students, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) found that only 214 institutions out of 1,135 (about 19…

This dissertation delves into the profound impact of the Second Great Awakening on American higher education and its enduring social consequences. Examining the period from the late eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, the research uncovers the core belief that drove the Awakening--that America and its citizens were chosen for a…

The value of business school pedagogy has received increased attention in recent years (Delgado and Stefancic, 1992; Giacalone and Wargo, 2009; Podolny, 2009; Grier & Poole, 2020; Prieto & Phipps, 2021). This qualitative study examined the ability of higher education business faculty to include chattel slavery in the history of American…

Over the past several decades, higher education in the United States has been shaped by marketization and privatization. Efforts to critique these developments often rely on a contrast between a bleak present and a romanticized past. In "Unsettling the University," Sharon Stein offers a different entry point--one informed by decolonial…

How much should student effort matter in their course grades? How much does student effort actually matter? What is the link between student effort and student performance, especially when the effort is not specifically focused on a specific performance metric? This paper examines these questions normatively as well as by analyzing student data…

This paper makes the case for why anti-racism pedagogy should be included and identified as anti-racism in political science courses and provides and evaluates an example of anti-racism pedagogy in an American Political Thought course. In addition, I address critics of anti-racism and ways of addressing those critics in the classroom. In…

This study examines the history of international academic exchanges in the United States, with a particular focus on study abroad programs, as well as the hiring of international faculty. The research focuses on international academic exchanges' activities based at a cluster of four institutions and considers these international academic…

When discussing college student voice, the historical narrative has generally focused on large-scale student activism as the definitive medium through which students expressed their beliefs. However, this inevitably leaves more subtle forms of student expression left uninterrogated, specifically in the South, and other areas of the country where…

The history of higher education in the United States is deeply rooted in colonialism. The communication discipline and the field of communication, teaching, and learning find themselves unable to completely sever their ties to settler/colonialism, white supremacy, and other dehumanizing ideologies. As the authors navigate the complexities of…

This paper documents how segregation between Black students and White students across U.S. colleges has evolved since the 1960s, explores potential channels through which changes occur, and studies segregation across majors within colleges. The main findings are: (1) Black-White dissimilarity fell sharply in the late 1960s and early 1970s and has…

It is widely recognized that religious groups played a key role in founding institutions of higher education before the early 20th century. However, until now, scholars have lacked the detailed data required to articulate how those denominations' early commitments to higher education shaped the system of colleges and universities we know today.…

Educational research, policy, advocacy organizations, and higher education policy scholars, have noted the significance of race-conscious admissions in the dismantling of the structural and material racial and class barriers that reflect the historical role of colleges and universities. In this essay, the author enacts a different reading of the…